Key Design Principles

Overview

HOW THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT CAN HELP

A Resilient Workplace is an ecosystem of workspaces designed to adapt and evolve over time, optimizing real estate while fostering higher levels of employee engagement. The result is a more engaged and effective workforce that allows the organization to respond to changing business conditions.

Through ongoing research and exploration via behavioral prototypes, Steelcase has uncovered two key design principles that can help organizations create resilient and cost-effective workplaces that address the issue of employee engagement.

These two design principles are:

1. Design for Wellbeing: Designing workplaces to support the holistic wellbeing of people can amplify employee engagement and satisfaction

2. Ecosystem of Spaces: A workplace ecosystem

Designing for Wellbeing

PHYSICAL - Be Healthier

Workpspaces should support movement throughout the day and encourage healthy postures that help workers stay comfortable and energized.

Ecosystem of Spaces

ECOSYSTEM OVERVIEW

An ecosystem of spaces enables an organization to be more resilient. It uses real estate more efficiently and cost effectively, making it easier for organizations to experiment with different types of spaces and evolve the workplace over time.

A workplace ecosystem supports employee wellbeing by providing individuals and groups with a range of options within the workplace that consider the following:

Posture
The workplace should encourage regular movement throughout the day and offer options for people to work in sitting, standing or lounge postures.

Presence
Spaces should enable quality interactions with teams that are both local and distributed across continents and time zones, supporting both digital and analog communication.

Privacy
The work environment should provide places that offer varying ways to achieve privacy, in both open and enclosed spaces. Privacy is important to all workers and a vital component of both focus and rejuvenation, which are essential to employee engagement.

Designing the Resilient Workplace

Overview

When creating a Resilient Workplace, consider the intentional combination of five spatial typologies (zones), designed to accommodate and anticipate changing organizational and employee needs.

The size, ratio and adjacency of each zone should be tailored to match both your business objectives and cultural expectations. The result is an agile workplace that supports change, rather than resists it.

Resident Zone

Assigned spaces for workers to complete everyday tasks. A space to support both individual focused and collaborative work. Owned amenities like personal storage and uniquely chosen worktools allow workers to personalize their space.

Meeting Zone

A variety of settings to support different forms of collaboration. This zone offers a wide range of connective technologies to support communication and collaboration of teams both physical and distributed.

Nomadic Zone

A welcoming destination for mobile workers to connect with others or find an appropriate space for focus. The Nomadic Zone fosters a range of interactions from short-term to long term with quick and easy access to data and power.

Resources Zone

Proven Spaces

OVERVIEW

At Steelcase, their workplaces serve as living labs for design ideas. They research, develop, refine and evolve insights based on their experience prior to bringing them to market. These insights help reduce your risk, as you create your own combination of spaces using our design ideas.

Two of the living labs at Steelcase are the WorkCafé and Innovation Center.

Explore their design ideas and tools, and discover what makes each of these proven spaces work and how you can customize your own combination of spaces.

INNOVATION CENTER

Innovation drives advancement. That’s always been true – throughout history, in every enterprise and in every part of the world.

An Innovation Center is a solution for organizations that supports collaborators with the range of settings to support the switch between individual and group behaviors. It is a space that communicates a culture of innovation to the employees it houses.

WORKCAFÉ

Business tasks today are more varied and more challenging. Workers are increasingly mobile and distributed. They often leave the office for a coffee shop or other third place, which separates them from coworkers, organizational resources and culture.

A WorkCafé is a dynamic space that connects people with colleagues, their work, and their organization. It transforms traditional corporate cafeteria real estate into destinations for connection, collaboration, focus and innovation.

Additional Resources

Insights + Solutions Guide

The Steelcase Global Report is the first to explore the relationship between employee engagement and the work environment. This guide offers specific actions and solutions to create a workplace that helps boost employee engagement.

Inspiring Spaces

Resembling a vibrant community, this dynamic new ecosystem of spaces supports all of the ways people want to work. When thoughtfully curated, these destinations blend design, materiality and performance in a way that creates a vibe and transcends the trends of the day.